SAUDI ARABIA

DAVID B. OTTAWAY, Washington Post Investigative Reporter, and ROBERT G. KAISER, Washington Post Associate Editor, February 13, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: To what degree is Saudi Arabia showing support for extreme groups to appease its public, and to what degree is Saudi Arabia actually contributing towards support terrorist organizations?
OTTAWAY and KAISER: Saudi Arabia supports a strict fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, known as Wahhabi Islam, and is very active in supporting its own religious ethos to other countries. Saudis give a great deal of money to charities that build mosques, support religious schools, and otherwise help propagate Wahhabi Islam throughout the Moslem world. Americans haven’t always recognized how central Islam is to the Saudi state. The Saud family governs because of a compact with the Wahhabi elders.
At the same time we found no evidence that the Saudis, and especially the Saudi government, has any intention of supporting extremism. They understand that Osama bin Laden and his supporters have the Saudi Royal Family in their sights. Unfortunately, some of the extremists are inspired by, and sometimes supported by, institutions and organizations supporting Wahhabi support.

SAMER SHEHATA, Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Professor, December 6, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: What is your assessment of the Saudi government and its feelings towards the United States and towards anti-American sentiment within its own borders? Do you believe the government is attempting a balancing act of being responsive to anti-American sentiment within its own borders? Do you believe the government is attempting a balancing act of being responsive to anti-American critics while maintain relations with our nation? What are the internal pressures being placed on the Saudi government and how are they responding?
SHEHATA: Certainly the Saudi government, like all governments, finds itself in a delicate situation. They have to answer at the moment to two groups---the U.S. and their own population. When U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is so reviled (as it is presently among man Saudis and much of the peoples in the Middle East), the Saudi government finds itself in a difficult situation. The Bush Administration’s policies toward Iraq are a good example. None of Iraq’s neighbors feel threatened by Iraq (Iran, Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait, Syria, or Saudi Arabia) and the overwhelming majority of the countries in the world do not feel that the regime of Saddam Hussein (as terrible as it is) poses an immediate or mortal threat to the U.S. Then why the rush to war? If you were a Saudi and you did not believe in the legitimacy of a U.S.-led war against Iraq (that will inevitably lead to many civilian deaths) wouldn’t you be upset if your government was cooperating with Washington in this regard?

RACHEL BRONSON, Council on Foreign Relations Middle East Studies Director, June 21, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: The Saudi government has helped fight terrorism, yet at the same time, don’t they also wish to reach out to elements of the Saudi public that support the terrorists’ objectives? How is the Saudi government doing at keeping this balancing act from toppling?
BRONSON: For the Saudi Arabian leadership, the two go hand in hand. They’ve been aggressively hunting down al-Qa’eda cells over the past 14 months, at the same time, they’ve adopted a less radical approach and are using different religious leaders to argue that al-Qa’eda is against Islamic precepts. Leaders who, in the 1990s, were banned from preaching in Saudi Arabia, are now back in the government’s favor because they’ve moderated their beliefs and language.
The King, and the CP offer a bargain: you reform and there’s a place for you, stay the radical course, and you’ll follow the fate of Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin.
The problem is sometimes this strategy doesn’t work. Al-Muqrin was in a Saudi jail and set free because the authorities thought he had moderated his ways.

JULIANNE SMITH, International Security Program Deputy Director, May 16, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: The Saudi government seems trapped between the need to fight terrorists and to appease terrorists. How do you evaluate the efforts of Saudi Arabia at reducing the threat of terrorism?
SMITH: The U.S.-Saudi relationship has been difficult since 9/11 and will likely prove even more so in the years ahead. Despite these difficulties, though, the relationship is a vital one that will increase in importance in the next five years. Creating strategies that integrate intelligence, security, military, political, and economic relationships while responding to domestic pressures that will mitigate against such ties will be a very tall order in the years to come. But without them, neither government will be able to succeed.

STEVE COLL, New America Foundation President, April 1, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Keeping in mind that the Bin Laden family is extensive and diverse, how well did any of the Bush family know any of the Bin Laden family? After all, George W. Bush’s oil partner had earlier partnered with Bin Laden investments, so the name perhaps was at least familiar to Bush. How was is arranged so quickly that the Bin Laden family were allowed to leave the United States so soon after their one relative’s attack on us? Did the Bin Ladens initiate the move for their safety, or did our government make that decision? Finally, while the Bin Laden family was being moved, do we know if they were questioned about Osama Bin Laden while being transported?
COLL: There’s no reason to think they had an intimate relationship. They had some common business interests. James Baker, the former Secretary of State, and a longtime Bush family advisor, seems to have known the Bin Ladens better than the Bushes themselves.
After 9/11, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Bandar bin Sultan, requested help from the White House and the F.B.I. to evacuate three groups of Saudi elite then in the U.S. Bandar feared they might be subjected to revenge attacks. One groups, including some members of the Saudi royal family, was in California and Las Vegas on vacation. Another group had come in to buy thoroughbred horses at an auction in Kentucky. The third group were scattered members of the Bin Laden family who were residents, students, and visitors in the U.S. at the time of the attacks. The initiative for their evacuation seems to have been taken by the family and Bandar alike. The F.B.I. questioned almost all if not all of the family members as they boarded their charter plane to leave the country.